The best way to celebrate when the weather is warm is to have healthy grill recipes. These include grilled fish, meats, shrimp, and veggies. This means that everyone has something at the next BBQ party.
Healthy Ways to Grill
You might think that BBQ is unhealthy, but there are ways to make this healthy. These are the following:
Use only lean meats.
Before you marinate the meat, remove the excess fat. Also, remove the skin from poultry. With no excess fat, it also means fewer chances of having fire flare-ups.
Use only a healthy marinade made at home.
Homemade marinades are easy to prepare. They also contain just a fraction of salt or sugar. Furthermore, based on research, marinating meats before they are grilled can reduce HCA formation by 96 percent. HCA is associated with cancer risk. It is said that even just a dry rub of the marinade can reduce the HCA formation by 70 percent.
Avoid heavily processed foods.
Pre-packaged burgers and hot dogs may be filled with all types of nitrates, preservatives, and other bad elements. You need to do away with these and stick only to homemade burgers and other healthy and natural food products.
Pair up your proteins with some veggies.
You can find a lot of veggies that you can add to the grill while you’re cooking. These veggies can be cooked in just minutes. Examples of such veggies are carrots, zucchini, potatoes, mushrooms, beets, tomatoes, eggplant, squash, corn, and leek. You can also add some fruits like pineapple, apple, mango, figs, pear, and many others.
Another piece of advice to reduce HCA formation is to flip the meat more often.
Best Tips for Grilling
The following are some tips that you can follow to ensure that you will get the best results when grilling whether outdoors or indoors with a grill pan:
Always remember the oil.
There are several cases when you have to use a cooking spray, but most of the time you’ll have to use oil on the grill or grill pan. This will make sure that your dishes will not stick to the grill or fall apart when it is flipped. Remember as well that you can grill the whole year round even during the non-grilling season using an indoor grill pan.
Avoid overcooking the meat.
It doesn’t take a long time for fish or tender meat to turn out dry and tough when you don’t pay enough attention to it. To achieve the best results, you may cook the chicken at 155F. Then remove it from heat and let it rest while covered for 5 minutes. The chicken will be continuously cooked at an increased temperature beyond 165F. This will make your meat tender and juicy. For salmon, it should be 125F for medium-rare and 140F for medium. The salmon must become tender with a fork.
Marinate it the perfect way.
Make sure that you follow the marinating instructions written in the recipe. It’s crucial to stick to the marinating instructions at a maximum level. This is so because the marinade may toughen, break down, and even start to cook the meats after this stage. You can set aside some of the unused marinades for later cooking instead of reusing them.
Use the same ingredients.
Whether you grill meat, veggies, or fish, make sure that you use the same sizes of these for them to cook at the same time. If your chicken comes in different sizes, cook them by batch and according to size.
Let the grilled meat rest.
After you remove the grilled meat from the grill or pan, give it time to rest and cover it for at least 5 minutes for the juices to have time to redistribute.
Several side dishes can be added to your grill recipe to make it healthier. These include the following: fresh salad appetizers, leafy salads, whole grains, veggie-packed salads, potato salads, hot pasta, and pasta salads.